Full Circle
by Xandrabelle
Summary: A look at Subaru after the events of X17 when he accepts the position of Sakurazukamori. This is my effort to understand why he would serve the Sakura. A fic written in response to the Clampesque 1999 word challenge.


Xandra presents Full Circle - a response to the Clampesque 1999 word challenge. Yes, the main body of this fic is 1999 words on my word processor, not including this introduction or the author's notes at the end.

Summary: A look at Subaru after the events of X17 when he accepts the position of Sakurazukamori. This is my effort to understand why he would serve the Sakura.

Disclaimer: All X characters belong to Clamp. 

Spoiler: end of X17

Credit: This was inspired by Sakurakira's story "Edge" - which was also posted for the Clampesque 1999 word fic challenge. Kira, I hope you don't mind me borrowing your image of Subaru with the Sakura petal. All your Subaru angst simply rubbed off on me. Yours was about Subaru after Tokyo Babylon. I couldn't resist writing a perspective of X Subaru coping with Seishirou's death. 

~*~*~*~*~*

The act of accepting the eye had taken all of Subaru's courage. He almost didn't have the strength to take the beautiful ornate flask that Fuuma had offered him. Stretching out his hand once, twice, his heart almost gave out before he finally grasped the object that contained all that was left of his one and only love --Sakurazuka Seishirou. 

"So you accept this gift?" The Dark Kamui pressed him for his answer.

"Yes," Subaru whispered the word so softly that Fuuma could barely hear it, the wind snatching the sound away as if in horror of what it portended.

"What he has done to you, I can understand," the Dark Kamui stated with a depth of sorrow that surprised Subaru. 

Subaru tilted his head inquiringly. 

"Perhaps I may have to follow in the Sakurazukamori's footsteps..." he explained.

"To do to Kamui what Seishirou-san has done to me," Subaru completed the thought for him, understanding that here was another couple headed towards the same tragedy that he was in. 

Fuuma shrugged, "Ah." His eyes held a grief that Subaru could comprehend. There was no escaping the coming battle that would demand the death of one or the other. "The Sakurazukamori is a Dragon of Earth," Fuuma reminded him.

Subaru nodded. "I no longer care anything for the fate of mankind. The world could end tomorrow and I would not weep," he declared stubbornly.

Fuuma took a moment to stare intently at him over his small glasses. Then he nodded, knowing the decision was made. His task completed, the Dark Kamui soon left Subaru in that peaceful garden. All around, the Sakura and Camellia trees bloomed. A small ironic quirk that could have passed for a smile twisted the corner of Subaru's lips. What was it Fuuma had said? Yes, only in the garden of the Sakurazukamori would one find such blooms out of season. And he was now the Sakurazukamori, as soon as he opened the damned container. 

An infinite sadness washed over Subaru as he realised he was doomed to exist in solitary pain forever. His wish would never be fulfilled. He had nothing more to live for. He had lied when he told Kamui he wasn't broken. His heart was shattered in pieces that could never be put together again. He had been filled with a wild hope that Fuuma would kill him when he had shown up. But the flask he offered instead had thrown Subaru totally off kilter. Why did he always feel like he was the butt of fate's jokes? Nothing in his life made sense.

Subaru caressed the flask as he walked into that great lonely house. He wasn't surprised Seishirou lived in such a place. It was a traditional Japanese house. Everything was tastefully decorated. Subaru thought it was just so typical of Seishirou to have the best of everything, from the original expensive Japanese watercolours that hung on the walls, to the beautifully crafted furniture. Seishirou had always appreciated beauty, and Subaru knew that was why he had caught his eye. 

Subaru knew people found his appearance appealing and he cursed at it. Even as the thought came into his mind, a large mirror on the wall caught his eye. He stood frozen, looking into it. It was almost as if he could not recognise the young man gazing back at him in it. His short hair fell disheveled, his white coat still bloodstained. A single green eye glazed over with inmeasurable pain was set deep in his white expressionless face. He lifted a finger to push up the corner of his mouth. Did he even know how to ever smile again?

His single eye moved down the image in the mirror to consider the reflection of the container in his hand. What was it Fuuma had said? That this was Seishirou-san's wish, to restore the loss of his right eye. Why would Seishirou-san have been upset by the loss of one of Subaru's eyes? The thought ran round and round his head. Now that Seishirou was dead, how could Subaru ever know the true answer? Subaru closed his eye to the sight of himself in the mirror as despair flooded through him. 

Subaru lifted the patterned glass flask to his face and pressed his lips to the inverted star etched on its surface. It was the mark of the Sakurazukamori, identical to the ones glowing on the back of his hands. The brands had always been a symbol of his pain, a reminder of his betrayal by the man he loved. They were a symbol of loss as well, linked intimately to the sacrifice Hokuto-chan had made when she gave up her life for his. Now they were all the more precious to Subaru, he had so little to remind him of the two of them left.

Through the open window, a petal fluttered in, to land on the polished floor. Pink. An involuntary memory flashed past him. 

__

"Do you know why the Sakura blossoms are pink? It is because of the corpses buried under the Sakura tree..." Seishirou's velvet smooth voice sounded in Subaru's ears.

__

"The Sakura is beautiful but scary..." He remembered replying. 

Subaru had loved the Sakura, all through his childhood. He still did, even after all this time and despite his futile efforts to hate it. Seeing the pink petal on the floor, he was suddenly seized with an insane rage to destroy something. With incredible speed, he snatched up a pair of scissors from a side table and plunged the tip straight into the centre of the petal. So strongly did he strike it that the weapon stuck into the hardwood floor and stood reverberating from the force. A choked gasp burst from his lungs and a tear splashed onto the ruined petal. With a trembling hand, he touched the flower, all his hate fleeing away.

"What have I done?" Subaru cried softly to himself. He was a destroyer after all. He had thrust the scissors through the petal just as effectively as he had thrust his hand into Seishirou-san's heart. He knelt down on the floor frantically trying to put the petal back together but the torn bits would no longer fit. That which was perfect and unblemished was broken forever. This was how it would be for him. It was fitting that he would be the Sakurazukamori. All he was doing was following in a long tradition of despoilers. 

Subaru realised he had dropped the flask with Seishirou's eye in his frenzy. It had rolled over to lie by the side of a chair. Subaru scrambled over on his knees, his haste making his fingers clumsy as he picked it up. Anxiously, he examined it. He heaved a sigh of relief, the precious flask was still intact. 

Now was the moment of truth. Would he be able to open it? He clasped the cannister tightly his chest while he turned the decision over in his mind. Yes, he would do it.

It was stranger than he expected. Despite being fully versed in all things magic, the grafting of his new eye was something beyond his experience. For a moment he stood there stunned as he was engulfed with an aura that was uniquely Seishirou. The moment passed and Subaru sank down in a puddle on the floor. There was no pain but the new perspective was terribly disorienting. Subaru hadn't realised how used he had gotten to looking at things with only one eye. 

Warm, he felt warm. It was as if he was enfolded in the embrace of someone. How could this be? Subaru shrugged out of the long white overcoat that he wore, he was burning in the heat. "Seishirou-san," he cried. Was this what it meant to be joined forevermore with his lost love? Then the sensation passed and Subaru felt all the more bereft. He looked down at his hands in shock. The stars which had been so much an intimate part of his life ever since he was nine, were now gone! 

"No!" Subaru reached out, to what he didn't know. He simply didn't want to feel alone anymore. Jumping up, he ran out of the house. Running, running, he was chasing after an elusive phantom only he could see. Subaru didn't care about the deranged appearance he presented to everyone, his eyes wild with a sight newly acquired. 

But even a madman cannot run forever and Subaru soon found himself stopped short in a strangely familiar place. Looking around, he realised he was at a park, Ueno Park to be precise. Then he saw IT. His heart plummeted. It had been the call of the Sakura that he had heard. 

__

"Come"

Like an orphaned child in search of his parents, Subaru went towards it. As he approached the tree that he was now to serve, Subaru noted its beauty. The Sakura stood tall and proud, a rain of its petals falling down constantly. Subaru stopped under its shade and let the falling blooms caress the soft skin of his cheeks. Brokenly he cried, "Why?" That single word voiced all of his despair, all of his sorrow, all of his confusion. There was no one else left to ask that question. The tree was his only link to his past and it was now irrevocably his future. 

__

"I don't know."

The answer was not what he had expected to hear. But it had the effect of making Subaru burst into tears. He collapsed against the trunk and began to sob.

The Sakura tree rustled its branches in the wind. _"Sorrow is part of the human condition. There is only peace in death."_

What a very odd statement. Subaru raised his head, baffled, "I don't understand." He truly wanted to understand. How could life be only filled with sorrow? Was there never any chance for him to be happy?

__

"It is man's destiny to sleep after a life of toil, to be at ease after a life at war. Does not death after such a life greatly please? I am Death. I offer peace. Is that not a beautiful gift?"

"Yes, to die at the hands of the one I loved, that was all I ever wanted. I tried so hard to be worthy of being killed by him. Yet it was not to be," Subaru said bitterly.

__

"Yet it was your hands that delivered death to the one you love. It was a beautiful gift that you gave him. He did not shun the death ordered by destiny."

Subaru gazed up at the Sakura. "And what of my destiny. Will no one ever put me out of my pain?" 

__

"The world needs to renew itself. Fear, sickness, age, loss, labour, sorrow, strife, pain, hunger, cold; all which makes a loathesome life. Death is the end of all woe. I promise death to you. But until that time, will you let me comfort you?"

"Is it even possible? How can anyone or anything comfort me ever again? The souls of my nearest and dearest are within you," Subaru said.

__

"Yes, they now enjoy the eternal rest and happy ease which you want and crave. I shall gift you with your deepest desire. Bear with this short pain and your soul will be laid to sleep in a quiet grave within my heart. This is my promise."

Subaru laid a trembling hand on the trunk of the Sakaru. Its words struck a cord within his heart. How he so wanted to believe an end for him was in sight. 

__

"Once you stood beside me and tried to drive my evil away. Do you still think I am evil now?" the Sakura asked.

"No," Subaru admitted. The tree wasn't evil. It simply wanted to survive. Against all odds, against all pain. And now it had him to help it because that was what Seishirou wanted. And at the end for him, a death filled with peace. For now, Subaru was comforted.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Author's Notes: Just a small point about the Sakura in this story. It's speech is paraphrased from Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. It's the part where Despair tries to tempt Redcrosse to give up and accept death. I thought it was rather appropriate for Subaru who has such a strong death wish. 

Now in case you're wondering about the title, it has to do with Subaru starting out at the foot of the Sakura in Tokyo Babylon and he comes Full Circle to face the tree again after taking Seishirou's eye. Hope it works.

I was simply too tempted to write this after a bit of nudging from Aishuu, and was inspired by all the wonderful fanfics that have been posted for the 1999 word challenge. Here's my contribution to the collection of Subaru angst that's out there.


End file.
